Barbara Kissinger has been a freelance artist since 1983 when she came out with a line of wooden santas, called The Gift Givers of Christmas Collection, that she sold in 100 stores in 30 states for most of the 1980's. She started a cottage industry that helped her create the santas. In the 1990's Barbara designed wooden crafts for Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publications. One of her designs was on the cover of Holiday Crafts one year. In the latter part of the 90's she designed machine embroidery for Viking Sewing Machine Co., that lasted into the turn of the twenty first century. Since then she has been writing books for Pelican Publishing Co. based on her collection of Christmas Ephemera and Mother Goose paper collectibles, which she has used to illustrate the books she has done. She loves diversity, Barbara painted in her earlier years and you may see those pictures on her website, along with miniatures she has loved to create and other crafts she has done.

About her work, Barbara writes, "All my adult life I have been devoted to my 5 children, and now 9 grandchildren and 7 great-grandchildren and to my husband and my husband when he was alive gave me encouragement and let me lead my double life as an artist. Now in my 70's I will write a couple more books at least one will be a memoir to my children and now I am going into Garden Design taking an online course in it. I have never stopped my education over the years. I think it is a necessary thing in the course of ones life, not to be stagnant in any part of life itself, no matter how old you are."